Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Browse the Knowledge Base!

Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:

• First, it attempts to "read," or extract facts from text found in hundreds of millions of web pages (e.g., playsInstrument(George_Harrison, guitar)).
• Second, it attempts to improve its reading competence, so that tomorrow it can extract more facts from the web, more accurately.

So far, NELL has accumulated over 50 million candidate beliefs by reading the web, and it is considering these at different levels of confidence. NELL has high confidence in 2,810,379 of these beliefs — these are displayed on this website. It is not perfect, but NELL is learning. You can track NELL's progress below or @cmunell on Twitter, browse and download its knowledge base, read more about our technical approach, or join the discussion group.

Recently-Learned Facts

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
oil_herbs is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
iron_rich_food is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
workspace_capacity is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
wpze is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
ultra_violet_radiation is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	97.2
rita_wilson has husband tom_hanks	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
joseph_conrad contributed to the creative work the_secret_agent	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the sports leage ncaa uses the venue lavell_edwards_stadium	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
john_quincy_adams is a person born on the date n1825	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
english is the language of the country uk_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0